My Heart Sinks to My Feet
by xxCerezasxx
Summary: Set after 2.03 and during 2.04. Shane reflects. Shane-centric.


**Disclaimer:Don't own  
>Warning: Spoilers for episode 2.03 and 2.04<strong>

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><p>He's okay, he thinks, drum of the shower, hair in the drain. His ankle throbs with his heartbeat, pulsing, and the skin is tight and hot.<p>

He smears his palm through steam on the mirror.

No, he's not.

* * *

><p>Shane dreams: walkers and running and <em>Carl<em>, breath like needles in his chest. He dreams of pulling out his gun, Otis sweating, the smell and spray of blood, and feels that flare of fire in his skull.

He jerks himself awake. There are stars outside the window, the low, full dip of the snowy moon. Shane remembers its reflection on blood spilled across the pavement; white shining in that red and in that dark.

He isn't sorry.

* * *

><p>It's early morning, pale dawn, sky streaked gray. The promise of sun is yellow beyond the horizon, off toward the coast. Shane sits on the porch, elbows on his knees. He is afraid to sleep.<p>

There are footsteps approaching, a body settling down beside him, and he doesn't have to look to know. Rick's always been able to find him. His return from the dead proves that.

"We can talk about it," Rick says, hand on his shoulder, and Shane wants to laugh out the glass rattling in his throat.

They can't talk about it.

"Nothin' we haven't seen before," he says, and swallows, and he did what he had to. He lifts his chin. "He saved me and Carl." Shane closes his hand into a fist. That much is true. "He was a good man."

And Shane Walsh isn't. Never will be again. But it seems these days being a good man means pain and loss and dying and Shane won't let those things happen, not to Rick or Lori or Carl or him. He'll be the bad man so Rick doesn't have to, because Rick just doesn't have the guts.

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><p>"Otis." Shane starts, stops, starts again. His hand curves around the rock. "He knew what was important."<p>

(Hand in his hair.

_You son of a bitch_)

"He wanted to make things right."

Screaming. Skull under Shane's boot.

"Save the boy, he said. We gotta save the boy." He wonders how far he's fallen that he's standing here, changing a dead man's last words. All eyes are on him, and Rick's are heavy, enough to make Shane's shoulders hurt.

(Second bag slung across his back. He can't feel his heart beating. Empty, even; he thinks this is what it's like being dead)

"If any life ever had meaning, it was his."

He puts down the rock.

* * *

><p>Carl's lying in the bedroom and Shane creeps in, footsteps quiet, eyes on Lori and Rick talking softly at the end of the hall. They haven't said Carl's ready for visitors yet, but Shane needs to check.<p>

He can't get his bones to settle.

The bed dips under his weight and the old spring mattress creaks. Shane puts his hand on top of Carl's head, touches Carl's face.

Carl smiles, whispers, thin and weak

"Hey."

"Hey." Snuck in, middle of the afternoon, sun slanted gold through the blinds, and he can't think of a single thing to say. "Gave me a scare back there. I thought—" His voice comes out splintered, seems to shake. He swallows down the heat and heaviness of tears.

He's not the one who breaks.

"Thanks, Shane." Carl blinks up at him, face white, lips pale, but his eyes are bright, and there's a promise of color blooming in his cheeks. A few days and he'll be fine. On his way to good as new. Shane sees that moment at the high school again, the world in shades of gray, a series of choices, Otis or Carl, and knows he did what was right.

"No need to thank me, bud," he says and ruffles Carl's hair, lets his fingertips linger. Who knows what next chance he'll get to be near Carl next. This little boy he's loved like his own since he can remember. This kid he lives and loves and would die for (almost did). "I'd do anything for you."

* * *

><p>The walkers are getting closer. He has a bullet in his gun, twenty extra-pounds on his back, a hitch and drag in his step. Otis, panting, wheezing (breathing), like bone over gravel.<p>

Shane knows: minute to struggle with Otis, two to the truck, minute thirty until the walkers dig in. He could try—

"I'm sorry," he says, again, and pulls the trigger.

Shane sleeps.


End file.
